BenV's notes

Yesterday Slackware64-current gave me Firefox 3.6. So far I’m happy to note that this broke more than half my addons, but that’s to be expected with that addon-hell.
Wonder when they clean up that act and start including required stuff like firebug. Anyway, a while ago I built google gears for firefox 3.5. Since Google is too incompetent to provide a 64 bit linux version, you have to do it yourself, which I did. However, with the Firefox 3.6 upgrade this addon also broke. (continue reading…)

Don’t ask me why, but for some greasemonkey script that I wanted to run in Firefox I needed Google Gears.
So I went to the gears site with Firefox, and it told me that it needed to install some plugin. Yeah, whatever.
I hit the big Install Gears button, completely ignoring the tiny and almost invisible for my eyes 32-bit OS (64-bit not supported) notice below it.
Needless to say it went on to download a 3.5Mb package, started some popups and other junk after which it notified me of my grave mistake.
Aha. So for some reason Google is too incompetent to work with 64 bits software…. even microsoft can deal with that these days guys, geesh. (continue reading…)

A while ago I talked about emulators and my quest to run them on 64 bit linux.
Today I stumbled upon pcsx-r or PCSX-Reloaded. Basically the same thing as the old pcsx emulator, only better
Why? First of all it builds and runs on my slackware64 without 32 bits garbage attached to it. Second of all, someone is actively developing it which means it’s still being improved. Finally, the interface is slightly better.
I know it’s good since slackbuild compiled it without problems
Here’s the thing running on my slackware 64 install:

PCSX-Reloaded about screen

PCSX-Reloaded running Final Fantasy 8

PCSX-Reloaded showing Final Fantasy 8 intro movie

PCSX-Reloaded showing Final Fantasy 8 intro movie (2)

Offtopic: Do you know what really annoys me in games?
UNSKIPPABLE CONTENT!
In this case the intro movie, but it goes for countless of things: cutscenes (either ingame or fmv), “game over” screens, long talks that I don’t give a damn about when I already know what they’re saying… I’m sure there are plenty more examples of this. If you’re developing a game, make sure you don’t force your gamer through this nonsense. Yeah, it’s cute, and we understand that you spent countless of hours wasting your time on fancy graphics, but after the first time I really don’t want to sit through it again. Especially if I just died and am forced through it -again-.

So now that I had it running in the background and could rant while it showed the intro, here’s an ingame shot

PCSX-Reloaded showing Final Fantasy 8 ingame

Keep up the good work PCSX-Reloaded guys!
And fix your homepage.
Things that are currently wrong with it:
* It doesn’t tell me anything ABOUT the product, except for that it’s a fork/branch of PCSX
* It doesn’t have any screenshots (what is it with graphical programs that don’t have screenshots on their website? That’ s a FAIL right there)
* It doesn’t have any information on requirements etc, I just tried to compile it on 64 bit linux because I hoped it would work, not because your site tells me it does.

After toying around a bit on the news sites I decided it would be interesting to see if qBitTorrent would run on slackware 64.
So we go to the download site, copy the url, and see if Slackbuild likes it. Slackbuild leeches, untars, gives the configure options (which are a bit buggy, I know, will be fixed next release), runs configure. Configure crashes out with “blabla boost blabla”. (continue reading…)

You read it right, time for fun!

First we build ourselves a nice cute little server in a 2U rack case made by Chenbro (sounds like Xenbro to me ).
Inside we stash a quad core Phenom X2 810, 2 western digital 1TB disks from the “green” series and of course 8GB of DDR1333.
Could be faster, but this should do for not too much coin. (about 600 euros).
(continue reading…)

So I was bored and went through the usual slashdot, kernel.org, freshmeat.net, etc.
Once reading through the news on happypenguin.org I noticed it must be mario season or something.
After checking the descriptions I decided to check out Super Mario^W^WSecret Maryo Chronicles.
(continue reading…)

Since I quit playing World of Warcraft again a while ago (seriously Blizzard, what are you doing to that game?) I find myself enjoyed playing tons of other things. Funny thing is, most of the games I play are ancient. Games from the DOS era (which means DOSBOX, I love that product) like Master of Orion (and it’s sequel), Master of Magic, Paratrooper, One Must Fall: 2097 (which is freeware these days! Download it here), X-Com, System Shock, and the list goes on and on. Yeah, come to think of it…. the games they made back then were pretty brilliant, and it’s not just nostalgia. (continue reading…)